


The Last Victim

by r_alistair



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28450434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r_alistair/pseuds/r_alistair
Summary: A post-canon Sayu story in which she reflects.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	The Last Victim

_Breathe._

She’s trying, she really is.

_Breathe._

Her hands spasm and reach for her throat.

_Breathe._

She forces her hands to her sides.

_Breathe._

She opens her eyes.

Sayu Yagami stares at the ceiling of her apartment, head fuzzy with… she wants to say the remnants of a dream, but perhaps a nightmare is closer to the truth. She can’t quite remember. Besides, her waking, no matter the night she’s experienced, is never pleasant. It always involves too much breathlessness, too much begging, too much… emotion.

Sayu feels torn about that. _Too much emotion._ It seems weird to think that she could be overwhelmed with emotion, when she spends so much time simply without it. She’s not sure what is worse: drowning beneath the waves, or feeling as if she’s dying of thirst.

_Maybe I deserve them both,_ she thinks. It’s a recurring thought – she can never be rid of it. It sneaks up behind her, holds her hand. Offers comfort, somehow. _There’s a reason for this,_ it whispers. Sayu thinks she likes reasons, likes logic, likes… explanations. _That’s understandable_ , they all say. _You want to know how one of your own hurt so many others._

_I don’t,_ thinks Sayu. She doesn’t know if it’s a lie or not. How odd to not even know if you yourself are telling the truth.

Desperate not to get stuck in a loop of contemplation as she’s prone to (she’s spent days like this before; lying in bed, pondering and pondering and pondering), she swings her legs off the bed and plants them on the cold, cold, floor. The sensation of the frozen tiles and the jolt they send through her is oddly pleasant; it’ll prevent her from falling back to sleep at the very least.

A quick walk to the bathroom and she considers herself fully awake. Well, as awake as she gets; too many days of hers are spent in a daze, a state so distanced from reality she can hardly call it a state of being awake. A state of dreams and disillusionment.

She takes in her face in as she stares at the mirror. For a terrifying moment, her eyes gloss over her own reflection as if there is nothing there – as if it the face of someone else, or simply a smudge. _Or a ghost…_ she thinks, and smiles in spite of herself. A ghost. That is what she feels like so often, floating from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day… or place to place, though she rarely leaves her home. The high rise apartment with its large windows and intimidating staircases isn’t exactly comforting, but that doesn’t mean she’s not enamoured with it – obsessed with the way it makes her feel. The way it makes her feel. Calm, mysterious. Like she has a plan. Like _him._

She focuses once again on the mirror, on her reflection. All her features are accented, more obvious, more vivid. No. All of _his_ features are more accented, more obvious, more visible, no, wait, all of a sudden they’re the only ones there, and he’s here in the mirror, she can see him, she can touch him, she can let him out!

The mirror cracks as Sayu’s fist makes contact with it, the sound loud and unforgiving. Unforgiving also is the gift it gave her – an open wound, leaking blood. She watches the blood trickle slowly, dripping down into the sink. She doesn’t bother to wash it away. Somehow, to do so would feel like a betrayal. To what, she’s not sure. Maybe she wants evidence. _This happened._ Or maybe it’s to do with the blood – maybe she considers it proof her existence, her being, her living.

_There are other ways to see that blood you know…_

The thought is not so much a thought as a temptation; a beg disguised as a calm offer. _No_ , she thinks sternly. She almost wants to say it out loud, but there is something sacred in the silence. Even her footsteps seem more quiet than usual, the sound of her bare feet not muffled by socks but just by the air itself.

Her feet take her away, to kitchen, where she reaches up to a shelf, to grasp in her hand (the one free of blood) a small medical box, filled mainly with bandages and gauze. She tends to her hand, and for a few seconds wishes she had someone to do this for her, with her. It’s a bad idea, a bad thought. Not only is it a foolish longing, but it leads to a reminiscing; an unearthed memory which she wants to hold dear. If only it weren’t so tainted.

Her knowledge of how the memory will make her feel, her warning to herself – none if it seems to help, to stop it as it takes shape in her mind. She’d have been eight when it had happened. She’d planted some flowers on her windowsill and had cut her hand on one of the small terracotta plant pots. Downstairs she’d gone, tears welling in her eyes. And there he was, washing his hands in the sink, turning to meet her with a small smile on his face. _Okay, what’d you do this time?_

She’d stuck out her hand to show him, and his eyes had widened almost imperceptibly. _That looks a little serious, Sayu._ Despite the pain, she’d stuck out her tongue at him cheekily, at which he had offered a slight grin. _Alright. Sit at the table and I’ll tend to it._ Even at eleven, he’d had a presence – a sort of commanding aura which made one want to heed his words, hold them close. Obey him. She hadn’t though it dangerous then, it was hard to think of it as anything but now.

_My brother._ It’s the only way she can think of him. His name… his name invites too much. Personal effects gone through, a computer dragged away by two men in suits. And headlines, so many headlines. Who knew how the press got hold of the information; who cared. All it mattered was that she could no longer see his name - in her mind or written on paper – without every article she’d ever read crashing down on her, words, words, words. Genius. God complex. Misguided youth. Psychopath. Saviour. Killer. _Kira._ That one hurt almost as much, despite how impersonal it was, a moniker started by… who even knew? The internet was a cluttered, anonymous, graveyard and, beyond that, a mystery. Who cared enough to track down the first person to gift her brother with this title, to find them out?

She thought of this annoyingly often. Maybe if her brother had been given a different title, no title at all, things may have progressed differently. It was so, so foolish. She knew this. It sounded like a time traveller’s pathetic attempt to change the future without destroying the past. Pathetic. The word repeat itself a little in her mind, echoing.

There were articles on her too, of course. _Complicit?_ they said, the question mark seeming more for show than anything else. _Yagami sister involved in killings?_ Imagine that. Her, an accomplice to the Kira killings, and not questioned by the great detective L simply because he thought her young and girlish. _Complicit…_ the word reverberates and she questions it, pulls it apart. Was she _complicit?_ Did she know of her brother’s actions before they were revealed in the news? She was more observant than anyone gave her credit for, but Light (LightLightLightLightLightLightLight) ‘s change in demeanour could have been down to any number of factors, including adolescence, or even his father’s work. _Our father’s work,_ Sayu corrects herself. He belonged to both of them. And now he belonged to the earth.

_I lost you both,_ Sayu thinks. Although she’d previous envied her father and brother’s strong sense of justice, now she felt quite thankfully to not share it. In a way, it led them both to their deaths. _One at the hand of the other._

As she looks out the wide window of the apartment, she feels lonely. There are a few precious memories involving both her brother and the night skies, but they’re not what evokes this emotion. Seeing how much there is out there, the bright lights of all the other people living lives like hers, makes her realise how few people there are in her life. She’d maintained no friendships from her school or university, nor her bonds with her mother. Not that the former had many any effort on their own parts – any interest displayed in her was as ‘the sister of Kira’. She could recall so many times, the insensitive questions, the pulling of her hair, the tearing of her clothes. They’d scream at her.

_Did my uncle deserve to die, you stupid girl? Did you agree with your brother? Did you go to sleep every night knowing what he was doing in the next room? Did you care?_

Her own thoughts, both then and now, are a mirror.

_Did my brother deserve to die? Did you disagree with him? Did you wake up every morning to watch the news and fear for your life? Did it scare you?_

They’re ugly thoughts, but anger doesn’t need to be beautiful. Neither does justice.

_And there’s no justice,_ she thinks. _There never was._


End file.
